by Edith Layton
Clever Mr. Deems, his wife thought as she went to her room to prepare to greet him as such a canny gent deserved, to reason out that a gaming house was precisely where one might meet the most eligible gentlemen. And there, free of society’s strictures, he might become besotted, for constant company with Cee-cee would turn any gent’s thought to dalliance, and, once he saw that wasn’t possible, to matrimony. Then they could nab him before he remembered responsibilities to the name and the family and that sort of rot, for foreign travel altered one, just as Mr. Deems claimed, bless his heart, she thought, feeling strangely young and giddy herself because of tonight’s events. Then, so content she began to cobble up an imaginary dress for the wedding for herself, she went to her room, her only present doubt being as to which of the two fine gents would make a better husband for her daughter: the charming, beautiful viscount or the wealthy, manly, jovial giant.
“I think the viscount is amazingly handsome, but do you think he would outshine me in time?” Cecily asked her chaperone as that lady made ready to bid her good night.
“I think,” Francesca said determinedly, “that you do not know anything of him but his face, and so you should not even think of ‘time’ in regard to him…” And then, noting the maidservant’s displeasure at her direct disobedience to Mrs. Deems’ obvious wishes, she added weakly, despising herself but seeing the need, “…yet.”
“But your papa introduced us,” Cecily said smugly, as though reassuring herself so that she could go to bed allowed to dream of amazingly beautiful viscounts in peace and obedience.
“So he did,” Francesca replied tersely, thinking that her papa would have introduced them to a man-eating lion if it served his purposes, and knowing that if she said that she could never go on in the Deemses’ employ, and oh how she needed to. She sighed heavily.
“Oh, Mrs. Devlin,” Cecily cried out in her little girl’s voice, swinging round in her chair in front of her dressing table so quickly that her golden braid whipped out like a lash, “I’m so sorry. Has all this talk of weddings made you remember your own dear Harry?”
“No, no, I’m only weary,” Francesca reassured her, feeling dreadful about her several deceptions, for with all her loveliness, Cecily had no more cruelty than the lovely flower she resembled; it was only unfortunate that she had little more wit than one. “Thoughts of Harry only bring me happiness,” she lied, “and so it is—if you wed someone you have known well and for a long while.”
She could do no more just now, Francesca thought angrily as she left Cecily’s room, but, she resolved as she strode in a most unladylike fashion to her father’s chambers, she was about to do a great deal more. She was so full of what she’d say and how she’d put it, so ready to rage and so justified in it too, that she didn’t look where she was going and found, after she’d turned the corner of the corridor, that she’d walked straight into a wall.
And then the wall put out two strong arms to hold her upright and keep her from reeling, and leaning down, inquired in a smooth deep rumble of a voice, “Are you all right, Mrs. Devlin?”
She looked up, and then up further, and then up even above the white neckcloth so vast and so exquisitely fresh that it glowed like a beacon in the dim hallway, to see a concerned pair of eyes watching her carefully.
“You came around the corner so quickly…” Mr. Lyons began, and then added ruefully, “and I tend to fill a corridor rather completely. There was, you understand,” he explained further, when she didn’t reply, “nowhere for me to go to avoid a collision. But don’t concern yourself too much,” he added in amused tones when he saw from the tightening set of her lips that she’d begun to recover enough to realize who he was at last, “I’m not too shaken, although I confess I’m a trifle concerned because I tend to bruise so easily. But no doubt after a nice little lie-down I’ll be myself again, thank you.”
He grinned at her and she gave herself a tiny shake, and then, when he still didn’t move, she looked down at her arms rather pointedly. Only then did he release her, and she felt curiously light and insubstantial after he’d done so, for his hold on her, though light, had anchored her completely.
“I beg your pardon,” she said properly, “it was entirely my fault.” After a pause which he did not fill, and seeing that he still filled her path entirely and was making absolutely no effort to remove himself from it, she went on coolly, “I was on my way to see my father, who is just down the hallway, so if you wouldn’t mind…”
“I wouldn’t mind in the least,” he said amiably, “but he isn’t just down the hallway. He’s downstairs with my friend Viscount Hazelton. I’ve only just left them together. Talking,” he said at once, when he saw her sudden look of alarm. “We’ve done with wagering for the night. Only a fool plays past the midnight hour anyway, and whatever the time, we’re far too awake to the time of day, my friend and I, to dare wager any longer with your papa.”
He said it easily enough, and the light was too dim to make out his precise expression, but she’d seen the white flash of his teeth after he’d said it, and believed she was being mocked. For who would not dare to wager with her unlucky papa? And who more so than this professional gamester? That he was a professional Captain Sharp was a thing she’d have staked her reputation on, and she, as the long-suffering daughter of a gambling man, had learned to bet on nothing but eventual disappointment. This gentleman and his elegant friend were too at ease in this house, too at ease with her papa, and too at ease in their world to be anything but what she’d imagined them to be when she’d first clapped eyes on them tonight. And that was: exactly like her papa. For if they were cronies of his, then they must be gamesters, or worse, fortune seekers of some sort, although, from the look of them, obviously more successful ones than poor papa. Although that, she knew, was not difficult.
“I see,” she said coldly. Not only did she detest him for what he was, she remembered precisely what she was now, baron’s daughter or not: a woman in service, a supposedly impoverished widow in need of a secure position. Just the sort of female, she’d always heard, who could be expected to find herself being compromised by men of his sort. And she was alone with him in a darkened hallway.
He stared down at her, registering every detail of her appearance, and then, because her eyes were becoming used to the half-light, she could clearly see the warm look of appreciation in his eyes as he studied her. Half-terrified, she then realized she was half-thrilled, and then she was immediately vexed with herself at the sudden admission that it had been so long since she’d been looked at as a woman, that admiration from a rogue even of his low caliber had pleased her. That it could, even for an unguarded moment, in any fashion, upset her considerably.
She eyed him as warily as he studied her intently in those seconds that he loomed over her. He completely blocked her path, but the slight scent of spice and leather that emanated from him reinforced the sense of masculinity that emanated from him as well, and pleasant as it was, it frightened her even more. She swallowed so hard she was sure he heard the crash and founder of her gulp, as she did in her ears. But she had dignity, she couldn’t run. Besides, she thought, she’d only one direction to flee in. But she’d a sharp tongue and could summon a satisfactory shriek if she was prepared to. And, she’d fingernails. She braced herself.
He spoke.
“Good night, Mrs. Devlin,” he said in an amused rumble that sounded almost like a purr.
And stepped aside, and flattened himself as best he was able against the wall to make room for her passage. She was so startled by his entirely proper act that she hesitated before she held her head high and marched past him. Then he spoke again.
“Oh,” he said as her shoulders went up, “yes. Sleep well, and we’ll see you in the morning.”
She wheeled around, but before she could ask, he explained, “Your papa and Mr. Deems kindly accepted our offer to show you and Miss Deems some of the sights in the vicinity of Paris tomorrow. It bids to be a cold day, I see,” he said merri
ly, “so do dress warmly. Till then,” he added before he bowed and walked off down the hall.
Francesca was thoroughly furious by the time she reached her room. The more so because she’d had to wait until she was sure he’d gone before she’d doubled back again, remembering only after her encounter with the vile Mr. Lyons that there was no point in going to her papa’s room, and that her own room was on the other side of the house, where she’d just come from, near to Cecily’s, only one floor above hers, as befitted a servant.
She locked her door behind her, although she ruefully realized there was little need of it; no one had looked at her as a woman since she’d come to this hotel, since she’d agreed to work for the Deemses—no one, that was, except for the villainous Mr. Lyons. It seemed to her that since she’d willed that they would not, so they had not. She’d wished to be seen only as a good and decent, meek and proper woman, and had found that acting as one and thinking as one, keeping her head low and her eyes averted and wearing black and being deferential, had done the trick. But then, since before tonight she’d never lifted her fine eyes to the gentlemen to see their reaction to her presence, she could be forgiven for having thought that, especially since she’d wanted and needed so badly to believe it.
She’d quite forgotten, she sighed to herself, that once she’d been thought of, once upon a time but not so long ago, as a beautiful woman. No, that wasn’t quite true, she corrected herself guiltily as she came into the room and walked the few steps to her window, for servants’ rooms, even upper servants’ rooms, are not, even, or especially, in noble houses, anything like those for honored guests. The only roses in her small spare chamber were those that arose in her cheeks at the thought of her self-deception. For no, she’d never really forgotten that once she’d been considered lovely, and that, damn her vanity, she thought miserably, had made her present servitude all the more wretched for her.
“My own dark lady,” Harry had called her. “My own dark beauty.”
And that too added to her guilt. But then, in those lost carefree days she’d not cloaked herself in widow’s weeds and avoided men’s eyes, frowning at the mere thought of dalliance, walking head down and hesitant like a proper grieving widow ought to do. Only she wasn’t, she raged as she struggled to unbutton the detested shapeless black dress hastily so that she could fling it off the faster, for she, a servant herself, had no maid to assist her with the many tiny buttons. Not meek, she almost wept, sending a pearl button flying in her clumsiness, not widowed, she snarled to herself as she tugged her bodice down, not respectable, she thought, stepping out of the dress at last, and leaving it, like a deserted shell, almost all of a shape, behind her on the floor.
Now calm, and merely sorely troubled, she walked to her window and gazed through a shining sheaf of jet-black hair she’d just released from its bonds, to stare at the ghost of herself reflected in her night-silvered windowpane. And that ghost, she grieved again, was likely all she’d ever know of happiness, all she’d ever have of life, unless her fortunes turned. Unless, she thought, resting her aching head at last against the cool pane, her father’s fortunes turned again, and though they might, for all things were possible, she supposed, there was nothing she could do but wait. Because she’d already done all she could for herself, and that had netted her nothing but these useless tears she dashed away with the back of her hand; weak, self-indulgent evidences of her shattered pride that they were, she detested them as much as she did her helplessness.
She’d done everything she could think of to extricate herself from the situation she’d found herself in since she’d joined her father, only a few weeks that felt more like a few centuries ago. And she’d tried everything Father could think of as well—at least, she amended, with a ghost of a smile, those things she was willing to do. For she wouldn’t take over Roxanne Cobb’s position for any reason—standing about as a distraction and a decoration for lackwit boys and drunken gentlemen in gaming hells not being an occupation she considered either her vocation or her destiny. Only what those were, she couldn’t say, any more than she could say what final folly had brought her to her own special sort of degradation of the spirit. Because for all that she refused to play at Father and Roxanne’s games, and for all that she worked at the virtuous task of companion, still she had to lie, deceive, and playact to do it—just like Roxie Cobb, just like any cheat and scoundrel belowstairs tonight in the gambling salons.
For she was not Francesca Devlin, aged five-and-twenty, relict of the brave Lt. Harry Devlin, honorably fallen at Waterloo these ten months past. She was the Honorable Francesca Carlisle, called “Fancy” by her friends, aged only just one-and-twenty, and yet a maid, and very much one, for she’d no more been a wife to poor Harry than she’d been the lover that she’d sometimes been tempted to be to him. And she wasn’t meek or calm or disciplined enough to be a fit companion to poor foolish Cee-Cee Deems either, not when she couldn’t even reconcile herself to her deception. She was only a confused and silly chit herself, she thought furiously, in need of respectable employment so that she could earn her way home. For she was terribly homesick, that much was undeniably true, even though, she admitted on a sigh, she’d no home to remember or return to, and scarcely knew what it was she missed so badly.
Father had owned a home once, a great stone manor house built at the time of Queen Elizabeth. She’d heard about it so often she fancied she could picture it, but she didn’t remember it at all, since it had been sold out from under her when she was only an infant. Father had gamed it away, of course. Just as he’d gambled away his only son’s respect—because a father was supposed to hold on to his heritage so that he could pass it on as it had been handed to him; and as he’d gamed away his family’s friendship—because the head of the family was supposed to keep the clan together, not to lose everything and continually come to them for more to toss away; and just as he’d continued to play and lost his wife’s love—because a husband was supposed to find more joy in his bed with a live love than by clutching pasteboard pictures of painted queens to his thrilled and wildly beating heart.
So by the time Francesca had learned to spell her long name right and write it out neatly, the disillusioned son had taken up the army to make his fortune, the rest of the family had turned their backs on its nominal head, and the slighted wife had found a decent man forced to an indecency by his love and fierce feelings of protectiveness. For he took the baroness with him one moonlit night, all the way to an isle off Scotland’s coast, and thence to wive without benefit of clergy, so that thereafter only far-off Britain knew of her bigamy and his part in it.
The boy was older and had a legacy, and was left to it. The girl child too had been left behind. Perhaps her mother thought that she might lead a better life so, or so she ever after tried to believe, or else she’d been left so that there’d be nothing to remind the mother of her failure, and no trace of her marriage with the baron to shadow her new life. At any rate, she was gone to the kindliest world of all, Francesca learned, while giving her illegal husband their third child, about the time she herself was learning to cope with her new woman’s body. And once Francesca had mastered the way of walking and talking in her new guise as a tall and elegant young lady, and not just a leggy, misplaced child, the only son had finally found, if not his fortune, then his sad destiny, and not in gold, but lead, in the form of a ball to his lung, on the bloody fields of Waterloo.
And so, just as it had always been only Francesca and her father—and not even that, for whenever he was in funds, she was in a good girls’ school somewhere, and when he was out of funds, she was in a mediocre girls’ school somewhere—it remained so. But when she was too old for schooling, and dared to write to tell him of it, she’d received his summons to come live with him on the Continent. Astonished and delighted at her turn of luck, she’d forgotten that he lived by his turns of luck. Scarcely daring to believe that she could finally live with her remote and adored father, she’d packed and left England at once
. Only to discover him impoverished again by the time she’d arrived at his side, by two chance things—a horse that decided not to run hard one hard day, and cards that had turned up eights, when they ought, by all calculations, to have been aces.
For all she’d dreamed of seeing Paris and Venice and all the sights she’d read about, she couldn’t go on with him, not if it meant going as a gamester, not when all she’d wanted to do was to see those things with him as a daughter. But she hadn’t the funds to go back after she’d paid her hired traveling companion the last of the money she possessed, so that that indignant matron, lured out of England on a fool’s errand, as she’d complained, could return. She simply couldn’t afford to go back herself, even if she knew to where she could now go.
For there could be a delay in placing herself. There might be a teaching position at some girls’ school. There might be some relative to take pity on her and find her some other position. But such “mights” could be expensive, since she didn’t even have a home. She wouldn’t call on her old school friends, believing that the firmest friendship couldn’t support the twin burdens of sympathy and guilt their better stations would produce in them. She’d have to find employment of some sort, although there weren’t many choices open to a young woman, even one with some education. And she was wise enough to know there were even fewer for a good-looking but respectable one. Still, drudgery itself, or worse, pity, would be preferable to living her father’s sort of life. She, a gamester’s daughter who’d never gamed, had quite enough of games. Just as she, who’d never taken a chance, and so had never known all of physical love, knew she’d not have much chance of discovering that honorably now either.